Detroit considers posting health inspection grades in windows

Is your favorite Detroit restaurant storing chicken at 52 degrees? Are its employees washing their hands before exiting the latrine? Are those veggies not being washed before they land in your salad?

At this point, you really have no idea what goes on in Detroit's kitchens, but that could soon change. City council member Scott Benson is proposing a new ordinance that would require restaurants to post health inspection grades in their front windows.

Benson said he was motivated to propose such a system after the city's recent hepatitis A outbreak, Crain's reports. Detroit could use a color-coded system, or a simple A-B-C grading scale.

Such an idea seems nice on the surface, but there are often extenuating circumstances to violations and the system has the potential to do real damage to restaurateurs who genuinely don't deserve it. On the other hand, customers generally deserve to know who among the city's chefs are running a gross operation.

An ordinance is simply in the discussion phase and nothing official has been proposed. Stay tuned for more.

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